“Get out of here before I lose my temper,” I told him. With my left foot I kicked his knife into the gutter.

Gagging, wide-eyed with pain and shock, he staggered to his feet and limped away. A few passersby glanced at me, but no one said a word or lifted a hand to intervene. The city at its finest.

Underground. I heard a subway train rumble beneath my feet, its wheels screeching on the iron rails. Underground is a British word for subway. There was a subway station just outside the hospital’s main entrance. Looking across the street from where I was standing, I saw the entrance to another station. I dashed across the street, leaving a chorus of bleating horns and cursing drivers behind me, and raced down the steps. In the grimy, urine-stinking underground station, I went from one map of the subway system to another until I found one that was readable beneath the spraycan graffiti. Sure enough, a red line connected the station at the hospital with this station downtown.

Underground. They had come down here on the subway and gotten off at this station. I was certain of it. That’s what Aretha’s hastily scribbled message meant.

Now what? Where had they gone from here? A four-car train pulled in, roaring and squealing to a stop. The cars were decorated with bright graffiti paintings, cartoons and names of the “artists.” I found myself scanning the words on the sides of the cars, looking for a message. Foolish desperation. The doors hissed open and everyone got out. I started toward the first car, but a black man in a Transit Authority uniform called out to me:

“End of the line. This train’s goin’ t’ the lay-up. Next train uptown in five minutes. Next train over th’ bridge on the other level.”

The doors hissed shut and the train, empty of passengers, lumbered away from the platform and screeched around a bend in the track.